en.Wedoany.com Reported - NEC has secured a supply contract for the India-Southeast Asia (I-2SEA) submarine cable system, joining a consortium comprising Lightstorm, Microsoft, Singtel, and Tata Communications to strengthen digital infrastructure connecting India, Malaysia, and Singapore. The cable is designed to support the rapidly growing demand for AI, hyperscale cloud services, and enterprise connectivity in one of Asia's fastest-growing digital corridors.
The I-2SEA submarine cable system spans approximately 3,600 kilometers, directly connecting major AI and hyperscale data center hubs in Hyderabad and Chennai, India, with Singapore (the region's leading cloud interconnection and AI hub) and Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia's rapidly expanding data center corridor). Commercial operations are targeted for the fourth quarter of 2029, with the entire system expected to be operational by 2029.
The project features two landing stations in India. One landing point is located in Machilipatnam, providing the shortest cable route to Hyderabad; the second landing point will be at a new diversified landing site in South Chennai. By integrating with Lightstorm's over 30,000-kilometer terrestrial fiber network, customers will gain seamless connectivity to Hyderabad, Mumbai, and over 80 data centers across India.
The cable is specifically designed for the network demands of the AI era. By combining the 3,600-kilometer submarine cable route with Lightstorm's low-latency terrestrial backhaul, the consortium expects to deliver the fastest transmission speeds on the Singapore/Malaysia-Hyderabad corridor, a route of strategic importance for AI model training and inference workloads. The network will support hyperscalers, GPU infrastructure providers, cloud companies, and enterprises deploying generative AI applications.
Lightstorm will integrate this new submarine cable into its SmartNet AI Fabric, enabling low-jitter and loss-optimized transmission across cloud regions, GPU clusters, data centers, and distributed AI infrastructure. Customers will also benefit from the company's Polarin platform, which offers on-demand provisioning, unified network management, real-time visibility, and flexible capacity scaling. The system adopts an interoperable cable architecture and neutral carrier landing infrastructure at both Indian landing stations.
To enhance reliability, the consortium has designed an optimal route for the cable and implemented a three-meter burial strategy in buried sections of the network to strengthen protection against external damage while maximizing network availability and resilience.
NEC brings over 60 years of submarine cable experience to the project. The company has deployed more than 450,000 kilometers of submarine cables globally—approximately 11 times the Earth's circumference—and has established a strong presence in the Asia-Pacific submarine cable market.
The I-2SEA consortium operates under a joint construction agreement involving Lightstorm, Microsoft, Singtel, and Tata Communications. NEC will serve as the system supplier, while ASEAN Cableship Pte Ltd (ACPL) has been appointed as the marine installation partner. The consortium has opened system capacity commitments in preparation for deployment.
